Hours after unveiling its new process for handing out minister’s zoning orders, the Ford government announced it will revoke six given to projects that weren’t moving fast enough or weren’t properly serviced by local infrastructure.
Minister’s zoning orders (MZOs) are a tool the provincial government uses to overrule local planning decisions and bylaws — often to fast-track development projects.
Premier Doug Ford’s government has issued more than 100 since 2019, which is more than every past provincial government combined.
Housing Minister Paul Calandra promised to clean up the MZO-distribution process after taking over the cabinet post over in the heat of the Greenbelt scandal. In December, Calandra’s ministry proposed to revoke or amend eight MZOs that weren’t for housing-focused projects. It put another 14 MZOs given to housing projects under enhanced “monitoring.”
Six of the seven the government threatened to do away with entirely in December will be yanked because they haven’t made enough progress on subsequent planning approvals, according to decisions posted on the Environmental Registry of Ontario website on Wednesday.
Two MZOs will be scrapped in McNab/Braeside, along with one apiece in Kingston, Oro-Medonte, Brampton and Markham.
The two McNab/Braeside MZOs were meant to help build agriculture-related manufacturing facilities. On July 30, 2021, former housing minister Steve Clark said in a news release the projects would help bring 600 jobs to the area.
The Kingston MZO was granted on March 4, 2022, to allow a lithium-ion battery recycling facility to be built in an industrial park. Li-Cycle, the company planning to build the plant, laid off 30 employees from its existing Kingston facility last fall and is already building another half-billion-dollar factory in Rochester, New York.
The project didn’t move along fast enough and Kingston city council passed a resolution supporting the revocation earlier this year.
In October 2020, during the height of the pandemic, the provincial government granted an MZO for an 82-acre medical manufacturing park in Oro-Medonte, following a request from its council.
The “medical innovation park” was planned to house manufacturing facilities where personal protective equipment and other medical goods would be made and distributed from. The property, however, was listed for sale in early 2022, leading the housing minister’s office to promise at the time to “commence the process of revoking the MZO.
The revoked MZO in Markham was intended to permit sports and educational facilities to be built at 3565 19th Avenue, a property next to Greenbelt land owned by the city. A developer believed to potentially be interested in purchasing the land to build an expansive private school sold a private sports facility it owned to the City of Vaughan last year.
In Brampton, the Gorbind Marg Charitable Trust asked for an MZO to build a “dignified academic and cultural institution” for the South Asian community on property it brought the city.
One MZO that Calandra’s ministry proposed to revoke in December is being spared thanks to progress made to remedy local servicing deficiencies. It was given to a project in Markham that includes a proposed film studio.
The MZO Calandra’s ministry proposed to amend, which was in Pickering, will be modified.
No decisions have yet been made on the 14 under monitoring, which are being tracked until mid-2025.
On Wednesday, Calandra unveiled a more transparent framework that sets strict rules on what types of requests the ministry will consider, from whom, and how the process will play out.
Late last year, Ford’s PCs passed legislation to protect the government from being held legally liable for undoing or changing MZOs.
In a scathing letter co-signed by 18 development industry lobby group executives, they described the move as being “not consistent with a fair and democratic society” and that it “suggests that government (and those who work in government) are above the law."
Ontario’s auditor general’s office has also been looking into the Ford government’s “process for selecting and approving minister’s zoning orders” since shortly after the Greenbelt scandal exploded last summer.
